‘Holistic’ is a term widely popular these days. Holistic medicine, holistic management, holistic education, a holistic approach…, the world seems possessed by holistic ways. Despite this emerging interest in holistic-ism, not many people understand the need to have a similar approach for leading a spiritual life. They speak of being meditative, at the cost of being active, or being devotional at the cost of being a seeker of knowledge. Somehow, they feel that only either could be true. ‘How could one be a karma yogi and a bhakti yogi and a jnana yogi at the same time?,’ they ask with a tinge of sarcasm and non-belief. It is all right, they seem to say, to have holistic medicine or holistic administration, but in matters spiritual, one should be exclusive. They feel every yoga should be followed to the exclusion of other yogas

Though one’s temperamental needs do make one particular yoga more suitable to oneself than others, spirituality cannot be an exclusive process. It is, and has to be, an all-inclusive, all-absorbing process. One can be devotional, but that does not prevent one from being a seeker of knowledge or from being an active worker simultaneously. In fact, there is an urgent need to understand how indivisible spiritual life is. You cannot live a spiritually vibrant life in pieces nor can one divide it.